Our leaders and our resources

Jul 31, 2025 Editorial, News

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Kaieteur News – We reported earlier this week, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo confirming that the PPP/C Government will move ahead with their plan for a government-to government arrangement to develop oil blocks offshore Guyana.

He said government is still looking to go in that direction but it must yield good results for the country, in the sense that good deals must be cemented with people who are experts in the field. “So maybe a Qatar or a Kuwait or one of those countries that have long experience in this regard. So, it’s still on the card,” he added. The issue was first floated back in October 2022 by President, Dr. Irfaan Ali who at the time had disclosed that his government has set aside certain oil blocks which would be used for government-to-government partnerships.

It must be stated that any talk about our oil and this government does not inspire confidence. The ongoing struggle to get the government to be more transparent with its management of the oil sector, and also ensuring the Commissioner of Information is accountable to the people of this country, are just manifestations of an administration that acts as if the resources of this country belong to them. We have said here in the past that no government, no political party, and no leader of any kind owns the natural resource wealth of this country.

It doesn’t matter what it is, oil or gold or bauxite or timber, as we have in such bulk, they don’t own anything, nothing belongs to them. The wealth of this country, all of its resources, are the inheritance of all its peoples, and all of it. So, let that be put to bed in the cleanest, simplest of terms.

Governments and political parties, and leaders do own something, though. They own the responsibility to govern and lead honestly for the benefit of all the citizens who put them there to run things for them. Governments and political parties owe a duty, have a total obligation, to the people to do right by them. It is through a number of things, the sum of what they do, that they fulfil what is their mandate, given to them by the people. That is, manage the wealth properly, watch over it like a hawk, and get the best for the people. The best is not for them and their cronies, which is what has happened here for too long and too often.

Already citizens are suffering from the “giveaway” of this country’s rich natural resources by the government to foreign companies. This has resulted in Guyana turning to financial institutions to fund most of its development, with only recently the country securing a US$30M loan to fix the water system in this country. In many ways what is happening in this country mirrors what the Mighty Sparrow sang about in his classic calypso “Jean and Dinah.” In the calypso, Sparrow spoke about the return of American soldiers to their homeland after World War II leaving behind a Port of Spain where local men were once again able to afford the attention of women who had become inaccessible during the boom. The song, masked in wit and innuendo, is really about power, opportunism, and abandonment. And in many ways, it speaks hauntingly to the Guyana we live in today.

With our oil resources the foreigners, investors, diplomats are reshaping Guyana’s economy, institutions and even its psyche. We have diplomats purporting to tell citizens who they must vote for and now we have a government talking about bartering our oil resources with ‘friendly’ countries. And like Jean and Dinah, our country’s resources-whether oil, gold, bauxite or timber; our dignity and agency risk being treated as commodities, subject to the whims of those in power or those with the money.

This situation has not been helped by the conduct of our leaders. As implied by Sparrow’s lyrics we have leaders who govern in a transactional way, where loyalty and dignity take a back seat to money. We now see some of our leaders jostling for control over the oil wealth with more urgency than they ever showed for fixing schools, roads, or hospitals or lifting citizens out of poverty.

The Natural Resource Fund, is treated less like a trust fund and more like an ATM. Our government speaks about transparency, but this mere lip service. Look around important contracts like the gas-to-energy project remain sealed or defended despite glaring inequities. Public consultations are rare and while billions flow offshore, ordinary Guyanese are still hustling, paying high fuel prices, scrambling for housing and watching inflation outpace their wages.

The deeper metaphor lies in how leaders, like the women in Sparrow’s song, seem to be shifting allegiances, not to the people who elected them, but to the foreign interests that fund their pet projects, photo-ops, and even their election campaigns. But Jean and Dinah were not fools. They did what they had to do in a tough world. So too, the Guyanese electorate is not naive. They have seen promises come and go. They have learned how quickly power changes hands, and how slowly accountability follows. What Guyana needs now is leadership with memory and conscience, leaders who understand that wealth without justice is just another form of dependency and development without dignity is no development at all.

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• Editorial, oil, Oil blocks, PPP/C Government, resources

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